Steward's men
by Nesta
Summary: This is my take on the idea that not everybody in Gondor would have welcomed Aragorn as king with cries of joy.


Steward's Men

_This is my take on the notion that not everybody in Gondor might have welcomed Aragorn as King with cries of joy (with thanks to Raksha the Demon and Peredhel). It takes place not long after the marriage of Faramir and Éowyn. _

'Leave that, lad, you'll strain your eyes.'

It was still strange to her to hear her husband addressed with such familiarity, and by a mere farmer; but she was beginning to realise that the familiarity masked a respect deepening to veneration.

Faramir looked up, smiling. 'I do well enough here, in the lamplight.'

The two dogs lay at his feet; Emmereth came forward, laughing, to remove a kitten clinging with sharp claws to his shoulder.

'It was always thus,' said Beor in his deep, amused voice, in which the soft southern accent was very perceptible. 'Never a mite of notice would the dogs take of me when he was here, nor the other beasts, nor the children either – all perpetually under his feet, not to mention the wild creatures he was forever bringing in.'

'I have heard he has some skill in taming wild creatures,' Éowyn put in, looking sidelong at her lord.

'Maybe. I have the marks to show for it, when I was less successful,' he answered peaceably, returning her look with a hint of a smile before looking down again at his book.

Emmereth shooed away the protesting kitten and came to trim the lamp behind Éowyn's shoulder.

'Can't I do that for you, my dear?' she offered. 'It is no task for a great lady.' Éowyn smiled up at her. 'Here I am no great lady. We know our duty to our husbands, we women of Rohan.' She re-threaded her needle and addressed herself again to the shirt. 'Unless, that is, my lord has some weapon he wishes me to sharpen, or some piece of armour to be burnished?'

'Not at this very moment, shieldmaiden, no,' he answered without looking up. Éowyn, already becoming accustomed to his teasing, went calmly on with her stitching, but murmured an imprecation in her own tongue. Faramir, overhearing, shook his head in mild reproof.

'So you understand something of this tongue of Rohan?' said Beor to Faramir.

'A little,' he answered. 'Enough to know if my wife miscalls me.'

Éowyn ran the needle into her finger and choked with a mixture of exasperation and laughter.

'See, she bleeds for you, my lord!' said Beor, grinning.

'That is very proper,' said Faramir approvingly. 'I strive always to merit such devotion.'

'You strive to merit a box on the ear!' flashed Éowyn.

'Peace! I'm too tired for warfare,' he said absently, returning to his book. A comfortable silence descended, until Beor, bending to stir up the fire, said rather roughly, 'There's many here who have bled for him before now, I reckon – and would again, if need be.'

Faramir looked up sharply. 'If need be? What need could there be, now all is over?'

'No need, maybe,' said Beor. He turned to Éowyn. 'You'll not know, perhaps, Lady Éowyn, but it was always the folk of Lossarnach who most eagerly followed the Young Lord – aye, and those of his kindred before him, way back into our longfathers' days.'

'The Young Lord?' She looked at her husband. 'That is you?'

Faramir nodded. 'It is no formal title. They call me that in Lossarnach and some other provinces, and among the soldiery. I inherited the name from my brother when he grew too old and proud to value it, and I being the youngest, it has remained with me.'

'No formal title, no,' rumbled Beor, 'but we meant him all honour by it, and still do. It will serve the Young Lord here until he has a son to bear it in his stead.'

Éowyn caught Emmereth's frankly speculative eye and blushed, but the men's thoughts were elsewhere.

'You see,' Beor continued, 'we are all Steward's men, here in Lossarnach. Not only we of Húrin's inheritance, but the whole fief – all Steward's men.'

'Therefore King's men, now,' said Faramir, laying his book aside and fixing Beor with a stern eye.

'True, all King's men now,' said Beor reluctantly, 'but Steward's men first of all.' He turned to Éowyn, evidently in order to escape from Faramir's gaze. 'The Young Lord knows well that if ever the need arises, he has only to call and we are for him, to the death if need be, and against all the world.'

His voice was raised in challenge, but nobody answered. There was another silence, as tense as the earlier one had been relaxed. More to relieve the tension than out of genuine interest, Éowyn asked, 'What do you mean by Húrin's inheritance?'

It was Faramir who answered. 'This farm, and a few others in Lossarnach and the hills of Lebennin, were part of the original landholdings of my forefather, Húrin of Emyn Arnen, many hundred years ago. That is, they belong to the Steward directly, whereas all other holdings in Gondor owe obedience to the lords of the fiefs, and through them to the King. It was from that inheritance, and from Ithilien before it was overrun, that the Stewards generally drew their own immediate following.'

Beor nodded agreement, but was too chastened by Faramir's disapproval to speak. It was Emmereth who broke in, 'And that has been both a loss and a gain to us: to all of us in the Inheritance, and most especially to this farm. A loss, in that so many of our sons have fallen in battle in the Steward's cause, down to my Hador that fell at the Bridge two years back in the Young Lord's company; and a gain, because the Young Lord and his brother, the Lord Boromir, came to us as our guests, many and many a time, which we accounted a great honour, and still do.'

Éowyn turned to smile at her husband, glad to steer the talk away from possible danger. 'And that is how you learned to be such a good farmer?'

'Indeed it is. From time to time, when I was a boy, we were turned loose up here for a few weeks, my brother and I. Sometimes for the hay-harvest, or the grape-harvest, and sometimes in the early spring. Ah, the flowers of Lossarnach in the springtime! Not even Ithilien can rival them. Next year you shall see them for yourself, for Lossarnach is as much your inheritance as it is mine.'

'That's true, for as anyone can see, you're a true daughter of Lady Morwen, for all your fair hair,' said Emmereth. Éowyn smiled at her warmly: here at least was one who did not ask if there was no woman of Númenor to choose.

'So the Young Lord spent his holidays cutting hay?' she asked teasingly, glad to lead the conversation further from its former ominous course.

'So I did,' he answered. 'I always held that a man should have more than one trade to his name.'

'Well, if you were to come to me seeking work, I dare say I could find you a place,' said Beor, recovering his former ease of manner. 'I never knew any man have more skill with beasts. I don't forget, either, the time you fetched out our two horses, the night our stables took fire, and they in such a panic that no other could come near them, and you with your very hair kindling…'

'It was no great matter,' broke in Faramir hastily. 'I singed my eyebrows and was a strange sight for a few weeks afterwards.'

'No great matter to you, maybe,' grunted Beor, 'but to us who would otherwise have been left to struggle with the farm work with no draught horses, and for the poor beasts themselves who would otherwise have burned to death, it was important enough. We remember such things, here in Lossarnach.' He heaved himself to his feet, and with a bow to Faramir, went out. Emmereth murmured something about the preparation of supper; the dogs, anticipating food, followed her out. Faramir returned to his book, and the kitten, taking advantage of his preoccupation, resumed its onslaught on his shoulder. Éowyn folded the mended shirt, put away her needle and went to remove the kitten. Setting it down on the floor, she turned to slip her arms about her husband's neck, and laid her cheek against his.

'How they love you, those two!' she whispered.

'Yes, bless them,' he answered. 'And yet it is as I feared.'

'You feared?' She drew away from him and sat back on her heels, scanning his troubled face in the lamplight; and was suddenly enlightened.

'Faramir, why are we here?'

'What do you mean?'

'You told the King you needed rest. You told me that you wanted to show me your old haunts. Now tell me the truth.'

'It was the truth.'

'Maybe, but not the whole truth. It has to do with what Beor said, hasn't it?'

He looked at her quizzically. 'Is it an inquisitor I married? Isn't it enough that I wished to show off my lovely wife?'

'No, flatterer, it isn't. You made up your mind in a great hurry, and that is not like you. And I don't believe you were so very tired.'

'It's true I have been short of sleep lately,' he protested. She refused to be deflected.

'And whose fault is that? You had heard something, something that worried you. Something about the folk around here, in Lossarnach.'

'You're right. You are learning to read me better than I read you! There are rumours…'

'Rumours?'

'Of … discontent.'

For a while they were silent. Then she said, 'Rumours of discontent, here in Gondor … Have you ever thought who would have been with you, a year ago, if you had held against the King?'

'How could I help it? I can give you some sort of answer, but it's only a guess: the proof is lacking. All of Lossarnach and Lebennin, I would guess, and some in the city, and most of the mountain provinces. Dol Amroth, I think, would always be for the King despite our kinship, and for the rest I am not sure. But of course it would never have come to that.' He smiled wryly. 'If the King had thought it would, he could have removed the danger easily enough by leaving me to die in the Houses. It would have been a matter of hours, and nobody any the wiser.'

'He would never have done that,' she said passionately. 'Even if he had been such a man as to wish to do it, and even if he had known you would become an implacable enemy, he would still have healed you. It was the mark of his kingship, he could do no other.'

'Of course not, don't be angry. In any case, to oppose his claim then, with the fate of Middle Earth in the balance, would have been utter madness. It would be madness now.'

'And yet Beor said plainly enough that it might happen.'

'Beor is of the old stock and the old allegiance. His mind is slow to change.'

'And how many others are like him? How many others have said in their hearts, if not out loud, that the Stewards ruled this realm well for – how long is it? – many hundreds of years, without need of kings, and that an unknown king out of the North is nothing to them beside you, whom they know and love?'

He was silent.

'That's why we are here, isn't it? That's what you want to find out?'

He sighed deeply. 'Sweetheart, you read my thoughts. Yes, that is why we are here.'

'And why did you not tell me before?'

'Because I needed your help.'

She frowned. 'You told me nothing because you needed my help?'

'I thought I might hear what I expected to hear. Coming with a fresh mind, you could have told me whether I was hearing the truth.' The wry smile returned. 'I didn't expect it to come out so soon, or so plainly.'

'And I had to play your game, without knowing the rules? Was that fair?'

'No, my love, it was not. I should have trusted you. Forgive me!'

He took her hands and looked down at her beseechingly. Reluctantly, she began to smile. 'Don't do it again.'

He bent to kiss her hands, but, she noticed, made no promise. Even his wife has to serve the need of Gondor, she thought. The Warden was not wrong, after all, in calling him a hard man. But I took him as he is, for better or worse.

'Well, now that you know my intention, we must plan our strategy. First we must gauge the strength of their feelings – it seems that will not be difficult – and then find a way to reconcile them. I think,' and his tone lightened a little, 'that the King must discover that he too is in need of some rest and fresh air, away from the City. He has not yet fully understood, perhaps, that the City is not Gondor. When they know him better, here in the provinces, they will accept him.'

'And that is what you want?'

'Of course it's what I want. Steward's man, King's man, it shall be the same thing, while I live. But,' he added grimly, 'as for the Steward's _woman_, that is not the same thing at all.'

'What do you mean by that?' She was suddenly afraid, the change of tone arousing the dread that still lurked in the back of her mind – the fear he might be jealous of what had passed. With an effort she looked up, but his eyes were dancing with laughter.

'I'll tell you at bedtime,' he said.


End file.
